Ashes to Ashes
A human body produces
five pounds of ash when burned. Twenty-five tons of ash from the Topf &
Sons ovens in the crematorium had been spread as fertilizer on the surrounding
fields. Whenever the wind came whipping in, it would churn up a bitter brown
smog of topsoil and ash that stung the skin and burned the nose and mouth and
choked the lungs. Visibility shrank to almost nothing. Cart horses refused to budge
and received terrible beatings from their enraged masters. Looters smashed shop
windows. Countless frantic calls for help went unanswered. We look back and
shake our heads and tell ourselves we aren’t like those people. No, not at all.
One of Those Days
None of us even knew God was dying until we heard He was dead. There was nothing the TV analysts could adduce that would stop the borders from bleeding or a shooting war from starting. A crow laughed at the old Jew being forced by masked vigilantes to climb a tree and chirp like a bird. I was inside this whole time tinkering with a machine for testing the concept that rocks communicate with each other. Parts and tools were scattered everywhere, but I wasn’t ready to say yet whether it was the machine or the concept that was flawed.